Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) had its environmental management system evaluated in terms of functionality in the first quarter of 2009. The enterprise’s environmental management system has been certified for compliance with the ISO 14001: 2004 international standards, so the analysis was targeted at finding ways of improving upon the system and making it more environmentally efficient. In the first quarter of the year, MMK actually happened to discharge more pollutants in the air than a year earlier, supposedly because of the growing agglomerate, coke, iron, and steel outputs:

Over 230 crimes related to production, storage, transportation, or sales of unsafe goods and services (Article 238 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code) were detected in Sverdlovsk Region in January-May 2009, Ural Federal District’s division of the General Prosecutor’s Office reports. For one, Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted a criminal lawsuit related to sales of overdue and therefore unsafe Heinz baby food. The respective documents have been placed with the court. It was revealed in the course of the inquiry that the manager of the baby food

Ural Airlines is to start operating a new Yekaterinburg-Moscow flight on June 26, 2009. The plane lands in Sheremetyevo International Airport. The flights will be operated on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The departure and arrival time for U6-466 (Yekaterinburg-Moscow/Sheremetyevo) flight is 9:30 PM and 10:10 PM, respectively. The departure and arrival time for U6-465 (Moscow/Sheremetyevo-Yekaterinburg) flight is 11:30 PM and 3:40 AM, respectively. The new flight is expected to make the transit passenger’s connections in Moscow more convenient, the airline reports. ‘Ural

One of the Urals’ oldest consumer electronics chain stores might close down before the end of 2009. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out that Uralskiy Val chain store might soon go out of business in accordance with the owners’ decisions. The possible liquidation could be caused by a dramatic drop in consumer electronics and home appliances sales, which, in its turn, was brought about by the global financial crisis. With the competition going up and the solvent demand going down, the Ural company finds itself unable to compete with the federal chains. The

‘If we do decide to set up a basket of currencies or a supranational currency at some point, I don’t think it would be a bad idea. However, it’s too early to speak of such projects yet. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states’ economies are very different just now; besides, a supranational currency is only useful when the countries are intensely involved in mutual investment and trade. We haven’t reached this cooperation level with all of the member states yet,’ Assistant to the Russian Federation President Arkadiy Dvorkovitch said at a briefing during the Shanghai Cooperation

‘SUAL Kremniy Ural has had a production stoppage because of the plummeting demand for its produce. This has to do with the general economic downfall that hit the silica-consuming steel-smelting and cast iron industries worst. Selling our goods is therefore virtually impossible at the moment. The company currently employs 122 people, but we are forced to make 85 people redundant soon. The remaining 37 employees will be enough to handle the current shipment volumes,’ UC RUSAL’s press officer for Ural Federal District Roman Lukichev said to UrBC. ‘The enterprise produced about 24,000 tons of